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Emily Brontë has become mythologized both as an individual and as one of the Brontë sisters.
She has been cast as Absolute Individual, as Tormented Genius, and as
Free Spirit Communing with Nature; the trio of sisters±Charlotte, Emily,
and Anne±have been fashioned into Romantic Rebels, as well as Solitary
Geniuses. Their lives have been sentimentalized, their psyches
psychoanalyzed, and their home life demonized. In truth, their lives and
home were strange and often unhappy. Their father was a withdrawn man
who dined alone in his own room; their Aunt Branwell, who raised them
after the early death of their mother, also dined alone in her room. The two
oldest sisters died as children. For three years Emily supposedly spoke
only to family members and servants. Their brother Branwell, an alcoholic
and a drug addict, put the family through the hell of his ravings and threats
of committing suicide or murdering their father, his physical and mental degradation, his bouts of
delirium tremens, and, finally, his death.

As children, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne had one another and books as companions; in
their isolation, they created an imaginary kingdom called Angria and filled notebooks describing
its turbulent history and character. Around 1831, thirteen-year old Emily and eleven-year old
Anne broke from the Angrian fantasies which Branwell and Charlotte had dominated to create
the alternate history of Gondal. Emily maintained her interest in Gondal and continued to spin
out the fantasy with pleasure till the end of her life. Nothing of the Gondal history remains
except Emily's poems, the references in the journal fragments by Anne and Emily, the birthday
papers of 1841 and 1845, and Anne's list of the names of characters and locations.

Little is known directly of Emily Brontë. All that survives of Emily's own words about herself is
two brief letters, two diary papers written when she was thirteen and sixteen, and two birthday
papers, written when she was twenty-three and twenty-seven. Almost everything that is known
about her comes from the writings of others, primarily Charlotte. Even Charlotte's novel, °
,
has been used as a biographical source because Charlotte created Shirley, as she told her
biographer and friend Elizabeth Gaskell, to be "what Emily Brontë would have been had she
been placed in health and prosperity."

Often  



 is used to construct a biography of Emily's life, personality, and
beliefs. Edward Chitharn equates Emily, the well-read housekeeper of the family home, with
Nelly based on the similarity of their roles and the similarity of their names, "Nelly" being short
for "Ellen" which is similar to Emily's pseudonym "Ellis." The supposed anorexia of Catherine,
who stops eating after Edgar's ultimatum, and of Heathcliff, who stops eating at the end, is used
as proof of Emily's anorexia; support for this interpretation is found in the tendency of all four
Brontë siblings not to eat when upset. Alternately, Emily's supposed anorexia is used to explain
aspects of the novel. Katherine Frank characterizes Emily as a constantly hungry anorexic who
denies her constant hunger; "Even more importantly," Frank asks, "how was this physical hunger
related to a more pervasive hunger in her life±hunger for power and experience, for love and
happiness, fame and fortune and fulfilment?" Well, one expression of these hungers is the
intense focus on food, hunger, and starvation in  



 . Furthermore, the kitchen is
the main setting, and most of the passionate or violent scenes occur there.

Similarly, Emily's poems are used to interpret her novel, particularly those poems discussing
isolation, rebellion, and freedom. Readings of  



 as a mystical novel, a religious
novel, or a visionary novel call on "No coward soul is mine," one of her best poems. The well
known "Riches I hold in light esteem" is cited to explain her choice of a reclusive lifestyle, as
is"A Chainless Life." The fact that many of these poems were written as part of the Gondal
chronicles and are dramatic speeches of Gondal characters is blithely ignored or explained away.
(In 1844 Emily went through her poems, destroying some, revising others, and writing new
poems; she collected them and clearly labeled the Gondal poems.)

The poems and  



 have also been connected. The editor of her poems, C.W.
Hatfield, sees the same mind at work in both, and Charles Morgan perceives in them "the same
unreality of this world, the same greater reality of another,... and a unique imagination."



Wuthering Heights is a large mansion, positioned in the dark and wild moors of Yorkshire. It is
home to Mr Earnshaw and his two children, Catherine and Hindley. When Earnshaw returns
from a trip to Liverpool with an orphaned boy, and states that he is to be accepted into the
family, the drama of the story begins.

The boy is named Heathcliff, which serves for both Christian and surname. Catherine and
Heathcliff become very close, but Hindley resents the newcomer, and sensing that his father
favours the orphan, he becomes insanely jealous, and violent towards Heathcliff.

Upon Mr Earnshaw¶s death Hindley inherits the estate and sets about making Heathcliff¶s life a
misery. Meanwhile, the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine has developed into love.
However, Catherine¶s head is turned by a wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton, who offers all the
things that Heathcliff cannot: Wealth, social status and security. She therefore acquiesces to
become Linton¶s wife.

D

        


Heathcliff is driven mad by jealousy and disappears from Wuthering Heights. When he emerges
three years later he is a changed man. Eaten up with bitterness and anger, he is as wild,
passionate, and dangerous as the moors that he inhabits. He is determined to make Earnshaw and
Linton pay for the misery they have caused him.
Ê
 

uY ‘isit The Bronte Haworth Parsonage

uY Bronte's Wuthering Heights
uY Haworth: ‘isit Bronte Country

The story is narrated retrospectively by a servant of the Wuthering Heights estate. This is spliced
with the current view of ghostly goings-on at the house, and Heathcliff, as an older man and
owner of Wuthering Heights, who is brutal and cruel to a surly young man and woman that live
with him in the mansion.

The themes of passion, love and jealousy, are just as relevant now as they were in the nineteenth
century and this is possibly the reason that the novel is as popular now as it has ever been. There
have been many modern adaptations, including films, plays, and even a musical.

Read more at Suite101: Wuthering Heights: Emily Bronte's Most Famous Novel
http://www.suite101.com/content/wuthering-heights-a110113#ixzz16SbOSMFq







Y
 
 

Got an exam coming up on Wuthering Heights and not sure where to start? This step-by-step
revision guide will give you all the essentials for passing that test.

 



 was Emily Bronte's first and only published novel, appearing in 1847 under
the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Any discussion of the novel should include an understanding of the
main themes or ideas presented, and the narrative structure that makes the telling of the story so
dramatic.

r 
      D 

 : the novel displays different types of love. The most famous relationship in the book is that
of Catherine and Heathcliff, a platonic but passionate relationship that continues long after
Catherine's death, despite the fact that in life she married another. Before she marries Edgar
Linton, she speaks of her feelings towards each man - "My love for Linton is like the foliage in
the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for
Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" (chapter 9). When Heathcliff eventually dies, it is with a light in his eyes
as he rejoins his love at last (chapter 33).

Other types of love are also shown in the novel: Nelly's maternal feelings towards many of the
characters (Catherine, Cathy, Hareton); Edgar's devotion to his wife Catherine and then daughter
Cathy; and the healthy love affair that blossoms between Cathy and Hareton, representing the
union of the Lintons and the Earnshaws and the hope of a happier future.

Ê   : much of the violence and cruelty in the novel arises from Heathcliff's desire for
revenge over certain characters. He hates Hindley as a result of the latter's unkindness towards
him when they were children, and retaliates by bringing up Hindley's son Hareton to be coarse
and uneducated. Similarly, he blames Edgar for stealing Catherine away from him, and ensnares
his sister Isabella into an unhappy marriage to spite him.

Not only does Heathcliff have no scruples about using innocent characters to exact his revenge,
he also demonstrates his desire for material goods, as his vengeance over Hindley and Edgar also
advance his plans to gain ownership of the two houses of the novel, Wuthering Heights and
Thrushcross Grange.

Read more at Suite101: Revision Guide to Wuthering Heights: How to Study Emily Bronte's
Tale of Cathy and Heathcliff http://www.suite101.com/content/revision-guide-to-wuthering-
heights-a115763#ixzz16Sb0DH3n
Y

The concept that almost every reader of  



 focuses on is the passion-love of
Catherine and Heathcliff, often to the exclusion of every other theme±this despite the fact that
other kinds of love are presented and that Catherine dies half way through the novel. The loves
of the second generation, the love of Frances and Hindley, and the "susceptible heart" of
Lockwood receive scant attention from such readers. But is love the central issue in this novel?
Is its motive force perhaps economic? The desire for wealth does motivate Catherine's marriage,
which results in Heathcliff's flight and causes him to acquire Wuthering Heights, to appropriate
Thrushcross Grange, and to dispossess Hareton. Is it possible that one of the other themes
constitutes the center of the novel, or are the other themes secondary to the theme of love?
Consider the following themes:

þ
    
   
The universe is made up of two opposite forces, storm and calm. Wuthering Heights and the
Earnshaws express the storm; Thrushcross Grange and the Lintons, the calm. Catherine and
Heathcliff are elemental creatures of the storm. This theme is discussed more fully in Later
Critical response to  





 
    
 
 
 
The novel is set at a time when capitalism and industrialization are changing not only the
economy but also the traditional social structure and the relationship of the classes. The yeoman
or respectable farming class (Hareton) was being destroyed by the economic alliance of the
newly-wealthy capitalists (Heathcliff) and the traditional power-holding gentry (the Lintons).
This theme is discussed more fully in  



 as Socio-Economic Novel.

    
   
It is not just love that Catherine and Heathcliff seek but a higher, spiritual existence which is
permanent and unchanging, as Catherine makes clear when she compares her love for Linton to
the seasons and her love for Heathcliff to the rocks. The dying Catherine looks forward to
achieving this state through death. This theme is discussed more fully in Religion, Metaphysics,
and Mysticism.


 
 

 
 

 


The male heads of household abuse females and males who are weak or powerless. This can be
seen in their use of various kinds of imprisonment or confinement, which takes social, emotional,
financial, legal, and physical forms. Mr. Earnshaw expects Catherine to behave properly and
hurtfully rejects her "bad-girl" behavior. Edgar's ultimatum that Catherine must make a final
choice between him or Heathcliff restricts Catherine's identity by forcing her to reject an
essential part of her nature; with loving selfishness Edgar confines his daughter Cathy to the
boundaries of Thrushcross Grange. A vindictive Hindley strips Heathcliff of his position in the
family, thereby trapping him in a degraded laboring position. Heathcliff literally incarcerates
Isabella (as her husband and legal overseer), and later he imprisons both Cathy and Nellie; also,
Cathy is isolated from the rest of the household after her marriage to Linton.

  
  


The hostility toward and the abuse of children and family members at Wuthering Heights cut
across the generations. The savagery of children finds full expression in Hindley's animosity
toward Heathcliff and in Heathcliff's plans of vengeance. Wrapped in the self-centeredness of
childhood, Heathcliff claims Hindley's horse and uses Mr. Earnshaw's partiality to his own
advantage, making no return of affection. Mr. Earnshaw's disapproval of Catherine hardens her
and, like many mistreated children, she becomes rebellious. Despite abuse, Catherine and
Heathcliff show the strength of children to survive, and abuse at least partly forms the adult
characters and behavior of Catherine and Heathcliff .

       .

In the passion-driven characters±Catherine, Heathcliff, and Hindley±pain leads them to turn on
and to torment others. Inflicting pain provides them some relief; this behavior raises questions
about whether they are cruel by nature or are formed by childhood abuse and to what extent they
should be held responsible for or blamed for their cruelties. Is all their suffering inflicted by
others or by outside forces, like the death of Hindley's wife, or is at least some of their torment
self-inflicted, like Heathcliff's holding Catherine responsible for his suffering after her death?
Suffering also sears the weak; Isabella and her son Linton become vindictive, and Edgar turns
into a self-indulgent, melancholy recluse. The children of love, the degraded Hareton and the
imprisoned Cathy, are able to overcome Heathcliff's abuse and to find love and a future with
each other. Is John Hagan right that " 



 is such a remarkable work partly
because it persuades us forcibly to pity victims and victimizers alike"?

      
    
 
 

Both Catherine and Heathcliff find their bodies prisons which trap their spirits and prevent the
fulfillment of their desires: Catherine yearns to be united with Heathcliff, with a lost childhood
freedom, with Nature, and with a spiritual realm; Heathcliff wants possession of and union with
Catherine. Confinement also defines the course of Catherine's life: in childhood, she alternates
between the constraint of Wuthering Heights and the freedom of the moors; in puberty, she is
restricted by her injury to a couch at Thrushcross Grange; finally womanhood and her choice of
husband confine her to the gentility of Thrushcross Grange, from which she escapes into the
freedom of death.


    
  

Heathcliff enters the novel possessed of nothing, is not even given a last or family name, and
loses his privileged status after Mr. Earnshaw's death. Heathcliff displaces Hindley in the family
structure. Catherine is thrown out of heaven, where she feels displaced, sees herself an exile at
Thrushcross Grange at the end, and wanders the moors for twenty years as a ghost. Hareton is
dispossessed of property, education, and social status. Isabella cannot return to her beloved
Thrushcross Grange and brother. Linton is displaced twice after his mother's death, being
removed first to Thrushcross Grange and then to Wuthering Heights. Cathy is displaced from her
home, Thrushcross Grange.

þ

  


The narrative structure of the novel revolves around communication and understanding;
Lockwood is unable to communicate with or understand the relationships at Wuthering Heights,
and Nelly enlightens him by communicating the history of the Earnshaws and the Lintons.
Trying to return to the Grange in a snowstorm, Lockwood cannot see the stone markers. A
superstitious Nellie refuses to let Catherine tell her dreams; repeatedly Nellie does not
understand what Catherine is talking about or refuses to accept what Catherine is saying, notably
after she locks herself in her room. Isabella refuses to heed Catherine's warning and Nellie's
advice about Heathcliff. And probably the most serious mis-communication of all is Heathcliff's
hearing only that it would degrade Catherine to marry him.

 

Recently a number of critics have seen the story of a fall in this novel, though from what state the
characters fall from or to is disputed. Does Catherine fall, in yielding to the comforts and security
of Thrushcross Grange? Does Heathcliff fall in his "moral teething" of revenge and pursuit of
property? Is Wutheirng Heights or Thrushcross Grange the fallen world? Is the fall from heaven
to hell or from hell to heaven? Does Catherine really lose the Devil/Heathcliff (this question
arises from the assumption that Brontë is a Blakeian subbversive and visionary)? The theme of a
fall relies heavily on the references to heaven and hell that run through the novel, beginning with
Lockwood's explicit reference to Wuthering Heights as a "misanthrope's heaven" and ending
with the implied heaven of the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine roaming the moors together.
Catherine dreams of being expelled from heaven and deliriously sees herself an exile cast out
from the "heaven" of Wuthering Height±a literal as well as a symbolic fall. Heathcliff, like
Satan, is relentless in his destructive pursuit of revenge. Inevitably the ideas of expulsion from
heaven, exile, and desire for revenge have been connected to Milton's X
  and
parallels drawn between Milton's epic and Brontë's novel; Catherine's pain at her change from
free child to imprisoned adult is compared to Satan's speech to Beelzebub, "how chang'd from an
angel of light to exile in a fiery lake."

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Any serious discussion of  



 must consider the complex point of view that
Brontë chose. Lockwood tells the entire story, but except for his experiences as the renter of
Thrushcross Grange and his response to Nelly, he repeats what Nellie tells him; occasionally she
is narrating what others have told her, e.g., Isabella's experiences at Wuthering Heights or the
servant Zilla's view of events. Consequently, at times we are three steps removed from events.
Contrary to what might be expected with such narrative distance from events, we do not feel
emotionally distant from the characters or events. Indeed, most readers are swept along by the
impetuosity and tempestuous behavior of Heathcliff and Catherine, even if occasionally confused
by the time shifts and the duplication of names. Brontë's ability to sweep the reader while
distancing the narration reveals her mastery of her material and her genius as a writer.

To decide why she chose this narrative approach and how effective it is, you must determine
what Lockwood and Nelly contribute to the story±what kind of people are they? what values do
they represent? how reliable are they or, alternately, under what conditions are they reliable? As
you read the novel, consider the following possibilities:

uY Lockwood and Nelly are opposites in almost every way. (1) Lockwood is a sophisticated,
educated, affluent gentleman; he is an outsider, a city man. Nelly is a shrewd, self-
educated servant; a local Yorkshirewoman, she has never traveled beyond the Wuthering
Heights-Thrushcross Grange-Gimmerton area. Nelly, thus, belongs to Wuthering Heights
and Thrushcross Grange in a way that the outsider Lockwood (or Heathcliff) never does.
(2) Lockwood's illness contrasts with her good health. (3) Just as the narrative is divided
between a male and a female narrator, so throughout the book the major characters are
balanced male and female, including the servants Joseph and Nelly or Joseph and Zillah..
This balancing of male and female and the lovers seeking union suggests that at a
psychological level the Jungian animus and anima are struggling for integration in one
personality.
uY Does Lockwood represent the point of view of the ordinary reader (that is, us). If so, do
his reactions invalidate our everyday assumptions and judgments? This reading assumes
that his reactions are insensitive and unintelligent. Or do he and Nelly serve as a bridge
from our usual reality to the chaotic reality of Wuthering Heights? By enabling us to
identify with normal responses and socially acceptable values, do they help make the
fantastic behavior believable if not understandable?
uY Does the sentimental Lockwood contrast with the pragmatic Nelly? It has been suggested
that the original purpose of the novel was the education and edification of Lockwood in
the nature of passion-love, but of course the novel completely outgrew this limited aim.
Nelly±as the main narrator, as a participant, and as precipitator of key events±requires more
attention than Lockwood.

uY To what extent do we accept Nelly's point of view? Is her conventionality necessarily

wrong or limited? Is it a valid point of view, though one perhaps which cannot
understand or accommodate the wild behavior she encounters? Does she represent
normalcy? Is she a norm against which to judge the behavior of the other characters? Or
does she contribute, whether unintentionally, semi-consciously, or deliberately, to the
disasters which engulf her employers? To what extent is Nelly admirable? Is she superior
to the other servants, as she suggests, or is she deluded by vanity?
uY Is Nelly's alliance or identification with any one character, one family, or one set of
values consistent, or does she switch sides, depending on circumstances and her
emotional response? Does she sympathize with the children she raised or helped to raise,
a group consisting of Heathcliff, Catherine, Hareton, and Cathy? If Nelly's loyalties do
keep shifting, does this fact reflect the difficulty of making moral judgments in this
novel?
uY Is her interpretation of some characters or kinds of events more reliable than of others? Is
she, for instance, more authoritative when she speaks of more conventional or ordinary
events or behavior than of the extreme, often outrageous behavior of Heathcliff or
Catherine? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick notes that although Heathcliff talks about himself to
Nelly with honesty and openness, she persists on seeing him as a secretive, alienated,
diabolical schemer. Is Sedgwick's insight valid? If so, what does it reveal about Nelly?
Another question might be, why do so many people confide in or turn to Nelly?

There are two more questions that can be raised about the reliability of Lockwood and
Nelly. The first is, did Lockwood change any of Nellie's story? This is, it seems to me, a
futile question. I see no way we can answer this question, for there are no internal or
external conversations or events which would enable us to assess his narrative integrity.
The same principle would apply to Nellie, if we wonder whether she deliberately lied to
Lockwood or remembered events incorrectly. However, it is entirely another matter if we
ask whether Nellie or if Lockwood misunderstood or misinterpreted the conversations
and actions each narrates. In this case, we can compare the narrator's interpretation of
characters and events with the conversations and behavior of the characters, consider the
values the narrator holds and those held or expressed by the characters and their behavior,
and also look at the pattern of the novel in its entirety for clues in order to evaluate the
narrator's reliability.

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The novel opens in 1801, a date Q.D. Leavis believes Brontë chose in order "to fix its
happenings at a time when the old rough farming culture, based on a naturally patriarchal family
life, was to be challenged, tamed and routed by social and cultural changes; these changes
produced ‘ictorian class consciousness and µunnatural' ideal of gentility." In 1801 the Industrial
Revolution was under way in England; when Emily Brontë was writing in 1847, it was a
dominant force in English economy and society, and the traditional relationship of social classes
was being disrupted by mushroom-new fortunes and an upwardly-aspiring middle class. The
criterion for defining a gentleman was shifting to money, from character, breeding, or family.
This social-economic reality provides the context for socio-economic readings of the novel.

Is Brontë supporting the   and upholding conventional values? Initially the answer
would seem to be "no." The reader sympathizes with Heathcliff, the gypsy oppressed by a rigid
class system and denigrated as "imp" or "fiend." But as Heathcliff pursues his revenge and
tyrannical persecution of the innocent, the danger posed by the uncontrolled individual to the
community becomes apparent. Like other novels of the 1830s and 40s which reveal the abuses of
industrialism and overbearing individualism,  



 may really suggest the necessity
of preserving traditional ways.

This is not the way Marxist critics see the novel. For Arnold Kettle, the basic conflict and motive
force of the novel are social in origin. He locates the source of Catherine and Heatcliff's affinity
in the (class) rebellion forced on them by the injustice of Hindley and his wife Frances.

He, the outcast slummy, turns to the lively, spirited, fearless girl who alone offers him
human understanding and comradeship. And she, born into the world of Wuthering
Heights, senses that to achieve a full humanity, to be true to herself as a human being, she
must associate herself totally with him in his rebellion against the tyranny of the
Earnshaws and all that tyranny involves.
Catherine's death inverts the common standards of bourgeois morality and so has "revolutionary
force." Heathcliff is morally ruthless with his brutal analysis of the significance of Catherine's
choosing Edgar and her rejecting the finer humanity he represents. Despite Heathcliff's
implacable revenge, we continue to sympathize with him because he is using the weapons and
values (arranged marriages, accumulating money, and expropriating property) of ‘ictorian
society against those with power; his ruthlessness strips them of any romantic veneer. As a
result, he, too, betrays his humanity. Through the aspirations expressed in the love of Cathy and
Hareton, Heathcliff recognizes some of the quality of his love for Catherine and the
unimportance of revenge and property; he thereby is enabled to regain his humanity and to
achieve union with Catherine. " 


 then," Kettle concludes, "is an expression in
the imaginative terms of art of the stresses and tensions and conflicts, personal and spiritual, of
nineteenth-century capitalist society."

Writing nearly twenty-five years later, Marxist Terry Eagleton posits a complex and
contradictory relationship between the landed gentry and aristocracy, the traditional power-
holders, and the capitalist, industrial middle classes, who were pushing for social acceptance and
political power. Simultaneously with the struggle among these groups, an accommodation was
developing based on economic interests. Though the landed gentry and aristocracy resisted
marrying into first-generation capitalist wealth, they were willing to mix socially and to form
economic alliances with the manufacturers and industrialists. The area that the Brontës lived in,
the town of Haworth in West Riding, was particularly affected by these social and economic
conditions because of the concentration of large estates and industrial centers in West Riding.

Proceeding from this view of mid-nineteenth century society, Eagleton sees both class struggle
and class accommodation in  



 . Heathcliff, the outsider, has no social or
biological place in the existing social structure; he offers Catherine a non-social or pre-social
relationship, an escape from the conventional restrictions and material comforts of the upper
classes, represented by the genteel Lintons. This relationship outside society is "the only
authentic form of living in a world of exploitation and inequality." It is Heathcliff's expression of
a natural non-social mode of being which gives the relationship its impersonal quality and makes
the conflict one of nature versus society. Heathcliff's connection with nature is manifested in his
running wild as a child and in Hindley's reducing him to a farm laborer. But Catherine's marriage
and Hindley's abuse transform Heathcliff and his meaning in the social system, a transformation
which reflects a reality about nature±nature is not really "outside" society because its conflicts
are expressed in society.

However, Heathcliff the adult becomes a capitalist, an expropriator, and a predator, turning the
ruling class's weapons of property accumulation and acquisitive marriage against them. Society's
need to tame/civilize the unbridled capitalist is handled in the civilizing of Hareton. Hareton
represents the yeoman class, which was being degraded. In adopting the behavior of the
exploiting middle classes, Heathcliff works in common with the capitalist landowner Edgar
Linton to suppress the yeoman class; having been raised in the yeoman class and having acquired
his fortune outside it, he joins "spiritual forces" against the squirearchy. Thus, he represents both
rapacious capitalism and the rejection of capitalist society. However, because the capitalist class
is no longer revolutionary, it cannot provide expression for Heathcliff's rejection of society for a
pre-social freedom from society's restraints. From this impossibility comes what Eagleton calls
Heathcliff's personal tragedy: his conflictive unity consisting of spiritual rejection and social
integration. Heathcliff relentlessly pursues his goal of possessing Catherine, an obsession that is
unaffected by social realities. In other words, the novel does not fully succeed in reconciling or
finding a way to express all Heathcliff's meanings.

Eagleton acknowledges that ultimately the values of Thrushcross Grange prevail, but that
Brontë's sympathies lie with the more democratic, cozy Wuthering Heights. The capitalist
victory over the yeomanry is symbolized by the displacement of Joseph's beloved currant bushes
for Catherine's flowers, which are in Marxist terms "surplus value." With Heathcliff's death a
richer life than that of Thrushcross Grange also dies; it may be a regrettable death±but it is a
necessary death because the future requires a fusion of gentry and capitalist middle class, not
continued conflict.
 

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The English Gothic novel began with Horace Walpole's à    (1765), which was
enormously popular and quickly imitated by other novelists and soon became a recognizable
genre. To most modern readers, however, à   is dull reading; except for the
villain Manfred, the characters are insipid and flat; the action moves at a fast clip with no
emphasis or suspense, despite the supernatural manifestations and a young maiden's flight
through dark vaults. But contemporary readers found the novel electrifyingly original and
thrillingly suspenseful, with its remote setting, its use of the supernatural, and its medieval
trappings, all of which have been so frequently imitated and so poorly imitated that they have
become stereotypes. The genre takes its name from   medieval±or Gothic±setting; early
Gothic novelists tended to set their novels in remote times like the Middle Ages and in remote
places like Italy (Matthew Lewis's à  , 1796) or the Middle East (William Beckford's
 , 1786).

What makes a work Gothic is a combination of at least some of these elements:

uY a castle, ruined or intact, haunted or not (the castle plays such a key role that it has been
called the main character of the Gothic novel),
uY ruined buildings which are sinister or which arouse a pleasing melancholy,
uY dungeons, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses,
become spooky basements or attics,
uY labyrinths, dark corridors, and winding stairs,
uY shadows, a beam of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering candle, or the only source
of light failing (a candle blown out or, today, an electric failure),

uY extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme
weather,
uY omens and ancestral curses,
uY magic, supernatural manifestations, or the suggestion of the supernatural,
uY a passion-driven, wilful villain-hero or villain,
uY a curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need to be rescued±frequently,
uY a hero whose true identity is revealed by the end of the novel,
uY horrifying (or terrifying) events or the threat of such happenings.

The Gothic creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to the dramatic and the
sensational, like incest, diabolism, necrophilia, and nameless terrors. It crosses boundaries,
daylight and the dark, life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness. Sometimes covertly,
sometimes explicitly, it presents transgression, taboos, and fears±fears of violation, of
imprisonment, of social chaos, and of emotional collapse. Most of us immediately recognize the
Gothic (even if we don't know the name) when we encounter it in novels, poetry, plays, movies,
and T‘ series. For some of us±and I include myself± safely experiencing dread or horror is
thrilling and enjoyable.
Elements of the Gothic have made their way into mainstream writing. They are found in Sir
Walter Scott's novels, Charlotte Brontë's > , and Emily Brontë's  



 and
in Romantic poetry like Samuel Coleridge's "Christabel," Lord Byron's "The Giaour," and John
Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes." A tendency to the macabre and bizarre which appears in writers
like William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Flannery O'Connor has been called Southern Gothic.

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Whether or not  



 should be classified as a Gothic novel (certainly it is not
 a Gothic novel), it undeniably contains Gothic elements.

In true Gothic fashion, boundaries are trespassed, specifically love crossing the boundary
between life and death and Heathcliff's transgressing social class and family ties. Brontë follows
Walpole and Radcliffe in portraying the tyrannies of the father and the cruelties of the patriarchal
family and in reconstituting the family on non-patriarchal lines, even though no counterbalancing
matriarch or matriarchal family is presented. Brontë has incorporated the Gothic trappings of
imprisonment and escape, flight, the persecuted heroine, the heroine wooed by a dangerous and a
good suitor, ghosts, necrophilia, a mysterious foundling, and revenge. The weather-buffeted
Wuthering Heights is the traditional castle, and Catherine resembles Ann Radcliffe's heroines in
her appreciation of nature. Like the conventional Gothic hero-villain, Heathcliff is a mysterious
figure who destroys the beautiful woman he pursues and who usurps inheritances, and with
typical Gothic excess he batters his head against a tree. There is the hint of necrophilia in
Heathcliff's viewings of Catherine's corpse and his plans to be buried next to her and a hint of
incest in their being raised as brother and sister or, as a few critics have suggested, in Heathcliff's
being Catherine's illegitimate half-brother.

$ & #%#

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Ellen Moers has propounded a feminist theory that relates women writers in general and Emily
Brontë in particular to the Gothic. Middle-class women who wanted to write were hampered by
the conventional image of ladies as submissive, pious, gentle, loving, serene, domestic angels;
they had to overcome the conventional patronizing, smug, unempowering, contemptuous
sentimentalizing of women by reviewers like George Henry Lewes, who looked down on women
writers:

Women's proper sphere of activity is elsewhere [than writing]. Are there no husbands,
lovers, brothers, friends to coddle and console? Are there no stockings to darn, no purses
to make, no braces to embroider?  idea of a perfect woman is one who can write but
won't. (1850)
Those women who overcame the limitations of their social roles and did write found it more
difficult to challenge or reject society's assumptions and expectations than their male
counterparts. Ellen Moers identifies heroinism, a form of literary feminism, as one way women
circumvented this difficulty. (Literary feminism and feminism may overlap but they are not the
same, and a woman writer who adopts heroinism is not necessarily a feminist.) Heroinism takes
many forms, such as the intellectual or thinking heroine, the passionate or woman-in-love
heroine, and the traveling heroine. Clearly all the Brontë sisters utilize the passionate heroine,
whether knowingly or not, to express subversive values and taboo experiences covertly.

What subversive values and taboo experiences does Emily Brontë express with her passionate
heroine Catherine? Moers sees subversion in Brontë's acceptance of the cruel as a normal, almost
an energizing part of life and in her portrayal of the erotic in childhood. The cruelty connects this
novel to the Gothic tradition, which has been associated with women writers since Anne
Radcliffe . The connection was, in fact, recognized by Brontë's contemporaries; the ï  
reviewer labeled the Gothic elements in  



 "the eccentricities of µwoman's
fantasy'" (1847). Moers thinks a more accurate word than  


 would be 

 .
These perversities may have originated in "fantasies derived from the night side of the ‘ictorian
nursery±a world where childish cruelty and childish sexuality come to the fore." Of particular
importance for intellectual middle-class women who never matured sexually was the brother-
sister relationship. In childhood, sisters were the equal of their brothers, played just as hard, and
felt the same pleasures and pains; girls clung to this early freedom and equality, which their
brothers outgrew, and displaced them into their writing:

Women writers of Gothic fantasies appear to testify that the physical teasing they
received from their brothers±the pinching, mauling, and scratching we dismiss as the
unimportant of children's games±took on outsize proportions and powerful erotic
overtones in their adult imaginations. (Again, the poverty of their physical experience
may have caused these disproportions, for it was not only sexual play but   kind of
physical play for middle-class women that fell under the ‘ictorian ban.)

Moers applies this principle to the Brontës' chronicles of Angria and Gondal, which the sisters
collaborated on with their brother. Their turbulent sagas are filled with unbridled passions,
imprisonment, adultery, incest, murder, revenge, and warfare. Thus the uncensored fantasies of
Angria and Gondal, whose imaginative hold Emily never outgrew, may have provided an outlet
for the sisters' imaginations, passions, and aspirations; fostered their intellectual and artistic
equality with their brother; and provided the model for Emily's impassioned Heathcliff and
Catherine as well as for Charlotte's Rochester.


cc


Robert Kiely raises the question, in à  
 


 , Is there actually an English
romantic novel? He skirts answering his own question by suggesting that some novels are
influenced by Romanticism and incorporate the same style and themes that appear in Romantic
poetry and drama. In his discussion, the term  
  is often equated with the romance,
with the Gothic novel, and with the romantic elements in a novel. Kiely regards  




 as a model of romantic fiction; it contains these romantic/Gothic elements which
charterize the romantic novel:

uY The dynamic antagonism or antithesis in the novel tends to subvert, if not to reject
literary conventions; often a novel verges on turning into something else, like poetry or
drama. In  



 , realism in presenting Yorkshire landscape and life and the
historical precision of season, dates, and hours co-exist with the dreamlike and the
unhistorical; Brontë refuses to be confined by conventional classifications.
uY The protagonists' wanderings are motivated by flight from previously-chosen goals, so
that often there is a pattern of escape and pursuit. Consider Catherine's marriage for
social position, stability, and wealth, her efforts to evade the consequences of her
marriage, the demands of Heathcliff and Edgar, and her final mental wandering.
uY The protagonists are driven by irresistible passion±lust, curiosity, ambition, intellectual
pride, envy. The emphasis is on their desire for transcendence, to overcome the
limitations of the body, of society, of time rather than their moral transgressions. They
yearn to escape the limitations inherent to life and may find that the only escape is death.
The longings of a Heathcliff cannot be fulfilled in life.
uY Death is not only a literal happening or plot device, but also and primarily a
psychological concern. For the protagonists, death originates in the imagination, becomes
a "tendency of mind," and may develop into an obsession.

uY As in Gothic fiction, buildings are central to meaning; the supernatural, wild nature,
dream and madness, physical violence, and perverse sexuality are set off against social
conventions and institutions. Initially, this may create the impression that the novel is two
books in one, but finally Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights fuse.
uY Endings are disquieting and unsatisfactory because the writer resists a definitive
conclusion, one which accounts for all loose ends and explains away any ambiguities or
uncertainties. The preference for open-endedness is, ultimately, an effort to resist the
limits of time and of place That effort helps explain the importance of dreams and
memories of other times and location, like Catherine's delirious memories of childhood at
Wuthering Heights and rambles on the moors.

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Romanticism, the literary movement traditionally dated 1798 to 1832 in England, affected all the
arts through the nineteenth century. The Brontës were familiar with the writings of the major
romantic poets and the novels of Sir Walter Scott. When Charlotte Brontë, for instance, wanted
an evaluation of her writing, she sent a sample to the romantic poet Southey. The romantic
elements in the Brontës' writings are obvious. Walter Pater saw in  



 the
characteristic spirit of romanticism, particularly in "the figures of Hareton Earnshaw, of
Catherine Linton, and of Heathcliff±tearing open Catherine's grave, removing one side of her
coffin, that he may really lie beside her in death±figures so passionate, yet woven on a
background of delicately beautiful, moorland scenery, being typical examples of that spirit."
As the details of their lives became generally known and as > and  




received increasingly favorable critical attention, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne were cast in the
role of Romantic Rebels. Contributing to the Romantic Rebels Myth was the association of
Romanticism and early death; Shelley having died at 29, Byron at 36, and Keats at 24. Branwell
died at the age of 31, Emily at 30, and Anne at 29; to add to the emotional impact, Branwell,
Emily, and Anne died in the space of nine months. The Romantic predilection for early death
appears in  



 ; Linton is 17 when he dies; Catherine, 18; Hindley, 27; Isabella,
31; Edgar, 39; Heathcliff, perhaps 37 or 38.

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The major characteristics of Romanticism could be extrapolated from a reading of  




 :

uY the imagination is unleashed to explore extreme states of being and experiences.

uY the love of nature is not presented just in its tranquil and smiling aspects but also appears
in its wild, stormy moods,
uY nature is a living, vitalizing force and offers a refuge from the constraints of civilization,
uY the passion driving Catherine and Heathcliff and their obsessive love for each other are
the center of their being and transcend death,
uY so great a focus is placed on the individual that society is pushed to the periphery of the
action and the reader's consciousness,
uY the concern with identity and the creation of the self are a primary concern,
uY childhood and the adult's developing from childhood experiences are presented
realistically,
uY Heathcliff is the Byronic hero; both are rebellious, passionate, misanthropic, isolated, and
wilful, have mysterious origins, lack family ties, reject external restrictions and control,
and seek to resolve their isolation by fusing with a love object,
uY Hareton is the noble savage and, depending on your reading of the novel, so is Heathcliff,
uY Brontë experiments with the narrative structure (the Chinese-box structure in which
Lockwood narrates what Nelly tells him, who repeats what others told her),
uY the taste for local color shows in the portrayal of Yorkshire, its landscape, its folklore,
and its people,
uY the supernatural or the possibility of the supernatural appears repeatedly.

cc
|



uY
Romantic love takes many forms in  



 : the grand passion of Heathcliff
 and Catherine, the insipid sentimental languishing of Lockwood, the coupleism of
Hindley and Frances, the tame indulgence of Edgar, the romantic infatuation of Isabella,
the puppy love of Cathy and Linton, and the flirtatious sexual attraction of Cathy and
Hareton. These lovers, with the possible exception of Hareton and Cathy, are ultimately
self-centered and ignore the needs, feelings, and claims of others; what matters is the
lovers' own feelings and needs.
uY Nevertheless, it is the passion of Heathcliff and Catherine that most readers respond to
and remember and that has made this novel one of the great love stories not merely of
English literature but of European literature as well. Simone de Beauvois cites
Catherine's cry, "I am Heathcliff," in her discussion of romantic love, and movie
adaptations of the novel include a Mexican and a French version. In addition, their love
has passed into popular culture; Kate Bush and Pat Benetar both recorded "Wuthering
Heights," a song which Bush wrote, and MT‘ showcased the lovers in a musical version.
uY The love-relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine, but not that of the other lovers, has
become an archetype; it expresses the passionate longing to be whole, to give oneself
unreservedly to another and gain a whole self or sense of identity back, to be all-in-all for
each other, so that nothing else in the world matters, and to be loved in this way forever.
This type of passion-love can be summed up in the phrase !!  
"for it is
insatiable, unfulfillable, and unrelenting in its demands upon both lovers.
uY
uY D $
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uY Despite the generally accepted view that Heathcliff and Catherine are deeply in love with
each other, the question of whether they really love each other has to be addressed. This
question raises another; what kind of love--or feeling--is Emily Brontë depicting? Her
sister Charlotte, for example, called Heathcliff's feelings "perverted passion and
passionate perversity."

I list below a number of interpretations of their love/ostensible love.

uY u 
 . Their love exists on a higher or spiritual plane; they are soul mates, two
people who have an affinity for each other which draws them togehter irresistibly.
Heathcliff repeatedly calls Catherine his soul. Such a love is not necessarily fortunate or
happy. For C. Day Lewis, Heathcliff and Catherine "represent the essential isolation of
the soul, the agony of two souls±or rather, shall we say? two halves of a single soul±
forever sundered and struggling to unite."
uY u $    
 Clifford Collins calls their love a life-force relationship, a
principle that is not conditioned by anything but itself. It is a principle because the
relationship is of an ideal nature; it does not exist in life, though as in many statements of
an ideal this principle has implications of a profound living significance. Catherine's
conventional feelings for Edgar Linton and his superficial appeal contrast with her
profound love for Heathcliff, which is "an acceptance of identity below the level of
consciousness." Their relationship expresses "the impersonal essence of personal
existence," an essence which Collins calls the 
!. This fact explains why Catherine
and Heathcliff several times describe their love in impersonal terms. Because such
feelings cannot be fulfilled in an actual relationship, Brontë provides the relationship of
Hareton and Cathy to integrate the principle into everyday life.
uY u þ
 
 Are Catherine and Heathcliff rejecting the emptiness of the
universe, social institutions, and their relationships with others by finding meaning in
their relationship with each other, by a desperate assertion of identity based on the other?
Catherine explains to Nelly:
uY ...surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of
yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here?
My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt
each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and 
remained, I should still continue to be; and, if all else remained, and he were annihilated,
the Universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem part of it" (Ch. ix, p. 64).
uY Dying, Catherine again confides to Nelly her feelings about the emptiness and torment of
living in this world and her belief in a fulfilling alternative: "I'm tired, tired of being
enclosed here. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there;
not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart;
but really with it, and in it" (Ch. xv, p. 125).
uY u

  
 Their love is an attempt to break the boundaries of self and to
fuse with another to transcend the inherent separateness of the human condition; fusion
with another will by uniting two incomplete individuals create a whole and achieve new
sense of identity, a complete and unified identity. This need for fusion motivates
Heathcliff's determination to "absorb" Catherine's corpse into his and for them to
"dissolve" into each other so thoroughly that Edgar will not be able to distinguish
Catherine from him.
uY Freud explained this urge as an inherent part of love: "At the height of being in love the
boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his
senses, a man who is in love declares µI' and 'you' are one, and is prepared to behave as if
it were a fact."
uY u 
  Love has become a religion in  



 " providing a shield
against the fear of death and the annihilation of personal identity or consciousness. This
use of love would explain the inexorable connection between love and death in the
characters' speeches and actions.

Robert M. Polhemus sees Brontë's religion of love as individualistic and capitalistic:

uY  



 is filled with a religious urgency±unprecedented in British
novels±to imagine a faith that might replace the old. Cathy's "secret" is
blasphemous, and Emily Brontë's secret, in the novel, is the raging heresy that has
become common in modern life: redemption, if it is possible, lies in personal
desire, imaginative power, and love. Nobody else's heaven is good enough.
Echoing Cathy, Heathdiff says late in the book, "I have nearly attained my
heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me!" ...The
hope for salvation becomes a matter of eroticized private enterprise....
uY ... Catherine and Heathcliff have faith in their vocation of being in love with one
another.... They both believe that they have their being in the other, as Christians,
Jews, and Moslems believe that they have their being in God. Look at the
mystical passion of these two: devotion to shared experience and intimacy with
the other; willingness to suffer anything, up to, and including, death, for the sake
of this connection; ecstatic expression; mutilation of both social custom and the
 flesh; and mania for self-transcendence through the other, That passion is a way
of overcoming the threat of death and the separateness of existence. Their calling
is to be the other; and that calling, mad and destructive as it sometimes seems, is
religious.
uY The desire for transcendence takes the form of
crossing boundaries and rejecting conventions;
this is the source of the torment of being
imprisoned in a body and in this life, the
uncontrolled passion expressed in extreme and
violent ways, the usurpation of property, the
literal and figurative imprisonments, the
necrophilia, the hints of incest and adultery, the
ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff±all, in other
words, that has shocked readers from the
novel's first publication. Each has replaced God
for the other, and they anticipate being reunited
in love after death, just as Christians anticipate
being reunited with God after death.
Nevertheless, Catherine and Heatcliff are
inconsistent in their attitude toward death,
which both unites and separates. After crying
"Heathcliff! I only wish us never to be parted,"
Catherine goes on to say, "I'm wearying to
escape into that glorious world," a wish which
necessarily involves separation (Ch. xv, p.
125).

Conventional religion is presented negatively in

the novel. The abandoned church at Gimmerton
is decaying; the minister stops visiting Wuthering Heights because of Hindley's
degeneracy. Catherine and Heathcliff reject Joseph's religion, which is narrow, self-
righteous, and punitive. Is conventional religion replaced by the religion of love, and does
the fulfillment of Heathcliff and Catherine's love after death affect the love of Hareton
and Cathy in any way? Does the redemptive power of love, which is obvious in Cathy's
civilizing Hareton, relate to love-as-religion experienced by Heathcliff and Catherine?
uY u 

 Is what Catherine and Heathcliff call love and generations of
readers have accepted as Ideal Love really an addiction? Stanton Peele argues that
romantic or passion love is in itself an addiction. What exactly does he mean by
addiction?
uY An addiction exists when a person's attachment to a sensation, an object, or another
person is such as to lessen his appreciation of and ability to deal with other things in his
environment, or in himself, so that he has become increasingly dependent on that
experience as his only source of gratification.
uY Individuals who lack direction and commitment, who are emotionally unstable, or who
are isolated and have few interests are especially vulnerable to addictions. An addictive
love wants to break down the boundaries of identity and merge with the lover into one
 identity. Lacking inner resources, love addicts look outside themselves for meaning and
purpose, usually in people similar to themselves. Even if the initial pleasure and sense of
fulfillment or satisfaction does not last, the love-addict is driven by need and clings
desperately to the relationship and the lover. Catherine, for example, calls her
relationship "a source of little visible delight, but necessary." The loss of the lover,
whether through rejection or death, causes the addict withdrawal symptoms, often
extreme ones like illness, not eating, and faintness. The addict wants possession of the
lover regardless of the consequences to the loved one; a healthy love, on the other hand,
is capable of putting the needs of the beloved first.




uY How deep a chord Emily strikes with

the relationship of Catherine and
Heathcliff is shown by the use Simone
de Beauvoir makes of it in writing of
the French tradition of the
  
  or the the

 . Catherine's affirmation "I am
Heathcliff" is for de Beauvoir the cry
of every woman in love. In her
feminist, existentialist reading, the
woman in love surrenders her identity
for his identity and her world for his
world; she becomes the incarnation or
embodiment of the man she loves, his
reflection, his double. The basis for
this relationship lies in the roles society
 assigns to males and females.

The male is the standard or norm, the One; he is the subject who is capable of choice, of
acting, of taking responsibility, and of affecting his destiny. The female, who is measured
against the standard of the male, becomes the Other, dependent on him; she is an object
to be acted upon by man, the subject; she is given meaning and status by her relationship
to him. She is taught to regard man as godlike and to worship him; the goal of her
existence is to be associated with him, to love him and be loved by him, because this
allows her to share in his male power and sovereignty. She achieves happiness when the
man she loves accepts her as part of his identity. In reality, because no man is godlike,
she is ultimately disappointed but refuses to acknowledge his fallibility; because no man
can give her either his ability to act and choose or the character to accept responsibility
for those actions and choices, she does not really achieve or even participate in his status
as subject or standard. She remains dependent, Other. It comes as no surprise, then, to
find that the woman in love, who is seldom the wife, at least traditionally in France and
Italy, is the woman who waits.
uY Catherine implies that their love is timeless and exists on some other plane than her
feelings for Linton, which are conventionally romantic. If their love exists on a spiritual
or at least a non-material plane, then she is presumably free to act as she pleases in the
material, social plane; marrying Edgar will not affect her relationship with Heathcliff. By
dying, she relinquishes her material, social self and all claims except those of their love,
which will continue after death. Heathcliff, in contrast, wants physical togetherness;
hence, his drive to see her corpse and his arrangements for their corpses to merge by
decaying into each other.
uY If identity rather than personal relationship is the issue or the nature of their relationship,
then Catherine is free to have a relationship with Edgar because Heathcliff's feelings and
desires do not have to be taken into account. She needs to think only of herself, in effect.
uY In Lord David Cecil's view, conflict arises between unlike characters, and the deepest
attachments are based on characters' similarity or affinity as expressions of the same
spiritual principle. Thus, Catherine loves Heathcliff because as children of the storm they
are bound by their similar natures. This is why Catherine says she loves Heathcliff
"because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are
the same." As the expression of the principle of the storm, their love is, of course, neither
sexual nor sensual.
uY Because of the merging of their identities or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say,
because of their intense desire to merge and refusal to accept their literal separateness,
Catherine's betrayal of her own nature destroys not only her but threatens Heathcliff with
destruction also.
uY Is Catherine deluding herself with this speech? Louis Beverslius answers yes, Catherine
is preoccupied, if not obsessed with the image of herself "as powerfully, even irresistibly,
attracted to Heathcliff." Their bond is a negative one:

they identify with one another in the face of a common enemy, they rebel against a
particular way of life which both find intolerable. It is not enough, however, simply to
reject a particular way of life; one cannot define oneself wholly in terms of what he
despises. One must carve out for oneself an alternative which is more than a systematic
 repudiation of what he hates. A positive commitment is also necessary. The chief contrast
between Catherine and Heathcliff consists in the fact that he is able to make such a
commitment (together with everything it entails) while she is not. And, when the full
measure of their characters has been taken, this marks them as radically dissimilar from
one another, whatever their temporary 'affinities' appear to be. It requires only time for
this radical dissimilarity to become explicit.

Their dissimilarities appear when she allies herself, however sporadically, with the
Lintons and oscillates between identifying with them and with Heathcliff. When
Heathcliff throws hot applesauce at Edgar and is banished, Catherine initially seems
unconcerned and later goes off to be with Heathcliff. Her rebelliousness changes from the
open defiance of throwing books into the kennel to covert silence and a double character.
Catherine both knows Heathacliff and does not know him; she sees his avarice and
vengefulness, but believes that he will not injure Isabella because she warned him off.
Catherine's mistaken belief that she and Heathcliff still share an affinity moves her to
distinguish in their last conversation between the real Hathcliff whom she is struggling
with and the image of Heathcliff which she has held since childhood. It is with the false
image that she has an affinity:

Oh, you see, Nelly! He would not relent a moment, to keep me out of hte grave! à 
is how I'm loved! Well, never mind! That is not Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and
take him with me±he's in my soul.

The fact that to maintain the fiction of their affinity Catherine has to create two
Heathcliffs, an inner and an outer one, suggests that total affinity does not exist and that
complete mergining of two identities is impossible.

uY Catherine is similarly deluded about her childhood and has painted a false picture of the
freedom of Wuthering Heights.
uY Catherine's assertion that Heathcliff is "more myself than I am" is generally read as an
expression of elemental passion. But is it possible that she is using Heathcliff as a symbol
of their childhood, when she had freedom of movement and none of the responsibilities
and pressure of adulthood, when she was "half savage, and hardy and free."? Does
Catherine become, in the words of Lyn Pykett, "the object of a competitive struggle
between two men, each of whom wants her to conform to his own version of her"?

Y
Y
Y
 !!"#$$%

Emily Bronte chose Nelly Dean as the main narrator of her novel Wuthering Heights. How far
can we trust her version of events?

 þ

  % 

Nelly Dean, also known as Ellen, is the principal narrator of  



 # When
Lockwood becomes ill and wishes to learn about the history of his landlord, Heathcliff, it is
Nelly who relates the tale. At the start of the novel she is working as the housekeeper at
Thrushcross Grange, but has spent much of her life living and working at Wuthering Heights,
and has therefore witnessed first-hand much of the story she tells. This would seem to make her
an ideal narrator, but can readers really trust everything she says?

% + #     

As well as witnessing the characters and story she tells, Nelly is a part of it, and her actions often
affect events. She is prone to interference, carrying letters between Linton and Cathy, and
eventually telling Edgar of their relationship. She plays a crucial role in delivering a letter from
Heathcliff to Catherine upon his return, and allows him to visit her against Edgar¶s wishes.

Similarly, Nelly doesn¶t always do as she is told, and hides information from other characters.
She fails to tell Edgar ± her master, after all, how ill his wife Catherine has become, and also
neglects to inform him about Cathy and Linton¶s growing relationship until it is well advanced.

% +    ,  

Nelly is not infallible. She doesn¶t keep a close enough eye on Cathy, so that the child is able to
sneak away and visit Wuthering Heights. She is also tricked by Heathcliff when she and Cathy
travel to Wuthering Heights together, deceived into allowing the two of them to enter the house
where they are then kept prisoner until Cathy has been forced to marry Linton.

% + '


As someone closely involved in the story, Nelly¶s account is inevitably coloured by her own
opinions about the characters. Having grown up with Heathcliff, Catherine and Hindley, her
residual feelings of fondness and of family duty cause her to be more lenient towards them than
their behaviour sometimes deserves.

Similarly, it is natural that she should remain fond of the children she has been instrumental in
bringing up: she looked after Hareton for the first years of his life, and frequently refers to Cathy,
whom she has acted as a mother towards for all of the child¶s life, as her ³angel´ ± although her
behaviour often suggests she is anything but!

Ê
 

uY Characters in Wuthering Heights

uY Bronte's Wuthering Heights
uY Revision Guide to Wuthering Heights

Nelly is just as quick to show her disapproval of those characters she dislikes: Linton Heathcliff
merits particular scorn ± ³the worst-tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled into his
teens´ (chapter 23). Nelly is unable to tell us of his marriage to Cathy, as she finds herself locked
up safely out the way while it is taking place.

So while readers may enjoy Nelly¶s lively and gossipy narrative style, they would perhaps be
best advised to take it with a pinch of salt.

Read more at Suite101: Wuthering Heights: Nelly Dean: How Reliable is Nelly¶s Narration?
http://www.suite101.com/content/wuthering-heights-nelly-dean-a58698#ixzz16SaADkIa

!!&"

Much of the dramatic power of the novel lies in the use of a dual narrative. The main narrator is
Lockwood, an outsider who rents Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff; his reactions to
Heathcliff's rudeness and Hareton's surliness provides the reader with a more objective viewpoint
than that provided by Ellen Dean, the novel's second narrator.

Ê
 

uY Wuthering Heights: Nelly Dean

uY Carlisle Floyd Opera Wuthering Heights
uY Bernard Herrmann Opera Wuthering Heights

Nelly Dean is Lockwood's housekeeper, and is entreated by him to relate the histories of the
individuals he has just encountered at Wuthering Heights. Nelly is heavily involved in events she
describes, giving the reader a personal yet flawed account of the Earnshaws and the Lintons.

This framework not only provides the reader with two differing perspectives on events, but also
allows Bronte to contrast the past and the present. Whilst the reader may find Heathcliff rude and
ill-mannered, this abruptness can be seen in a new light when juxtaposed with the cruelty he has
undergone as a child. Similarly, Hareton's ignorance is gradually explained by his role in
Heathcliff's plan to exact revenge on Hindley.

Read more at Suite101: Revision Guide to Wuthering Heights: How to Study Emily Bronte's
Tale of Cathy and Heathcliff http://www.suite101.com/content/revision-guide-to-wuthering-
heights-a115763#ixzz16SakllXT